Mirror (rewritten, see chapter 3)
by superficialskull
Summary: This is a Thorki story revolving around Thor and Loki's sixteen-year-old misconceived daughter, named Ragn pronounced "RINE" . Raised by Tony Stark, and unknowing of her heritage, Ragn is the child of two fierce opponents - and possibly, the piece missing between their love and rage.
1. Chapter 1:We Introduce A Monster

**Chapter One: In Which We Introduce A Monster**

Ragn was brought into the world with three affirmations: a body, a name, and two parents to call her own.

She was adopted. When "Dad", Tony Stark, had first gotten around to explaining it, it didn't take long for the fact to register; she was clever, and adaptive, from the minute she could talk. Parental origins didn't seem to affect her upbringing, so Stark assuredly focused on better things while he and his fiancé Pepper raised her in the revolutionized environment of their home. She couldn't call her childhood average, as Tony wasn't the average father: the renowned philanthropist-prodigy-multi-billionaire-superhero, known for lavishing in as much wealth as he accumulated, would prove no less the man he always was by spoiling his adopted daughter in that same respect. Well-to-do in the home of the technological future wasn't a typical situation to be brought up under, no; but Ragn was a "special" child in other senses of the term.

She learned to speak quickly and thoroughly. Upon the first time she could ask intelligible questions, the first thing that came to mind was her own name.

"What does it mean?" she asked him, two years old with a brightness in her eyes that revealed a bizarre maturity about her.

And Tony replied, as he would many times, with quiet unease: "Uh…gods. It's Norse for 'the gods'." And he would leave it at that, because at least he had his usual distractions if he needed to get her off the topic.

The context of her name was oddly fitting, however. If Ragn was human, Tony had a hard time overriding her doubts – she was born extraordinary. From the first time Tony held her in his arms, the weight of her tiny body alone felt like he had drawn the legendary sword of Camelot out of the earth (to put it in the most distinct of his descriptions); he felt metal and power, and he could never prove the sensation wrong, because as she grew, he witnessed it himself. At four months, she had crawled from her crib all the way to the near-exit of his workshop – shocking, if not alarming to her parents' safety precautions, but Tony sat at his desk for a week after the fact trying to comprehend how a baby had the strength to pull itself up on the bars of a crib and climb down without accident. He made sure to adjust the bars at an extra-safe height, and concluded to himself, after she had crawled up his head a few weeks later, that she was a skilled climber. He knew that was barely the truth, though, and could no longer comfort himself with excuses when Pepper finally dared to use the word "super powers" in context. So Tony blamed his girlfriend for the remainder of Ragn's childhood.

Pepper's jab about "super powers" – inhuman strength, in Ragn's case – wasn't far-fetched from possibility and Tony knew that; the girl's bones were big and heavy, and even as a baby, one thrust of her hand or swing of her arm could "knock the eureka out of someone", as Bruce Banner had put it upon meeting the adopted phenomenon for the first time. Strength flowed in currents through her blood, it seemed, because the highly-adaptable muscles in her arms and legs were not the limits of her proven dexterities. The first time Stark had taken her to walk through the city in deepening rain, she tripped and skidded across scabrous concrete; he ran to her aid and expected to find blood washing into the puddle she had landed in, but the girl surprised him by the lack of bruises to her leg, and more so, the giggle that escaped her lips as she swept herself off the ground in a whim and continued bolting happily along the path. He thought nothing of her flexibility, then, until she began proving over and over to him that pain was seemingly disintegrate in her hardy little brain. Tony remained half-unconvinced of her capabilities until about age nine, when Ragn had successfully shocked her parents by lifting them simultaneously into her arms above the floor; he considered himself a believer from that point on, and put an 800-dollar gift in Pepper's hand as a silent surrender to the idea that they'd adopted something from planet Krypton.

It wasn't a surprise when Ragn questioned her own body; she was smart enough to notice the conspicuous differences. Tony's first attempts to ease her in were little stories that Pepper knew she would eventually grow out of; stories like, "when we found you, you'd been dropped out of the sky from a meteorite" and "you were actually born from a seed of one of Dr. Banner's radiation-prone plants". And Pepper would shake her head when Tony's answers didn't suffice the child. Eventually, they settled on the idea that she'd been adopted - solely for the purpose of and nothing less than that - because she belonged in a house of superheroes: unordinary, strong, and too precious to exist in the hands of anyone else. And Ragn believed it without a second thought; she had concerned herself with more dynamic topics anyway.

Physical unlikeness continued to thrive as her trademark; by age thirteen, her height had overshadowed Tony into the floor by two inches. Hence, the term "special" became mundane as Ragn matured. "Special" applied to kids who could draw photorealistic portraits in third grade, who could win track races with asthma and could speak intelligently about stock trades and try to change futures; Ragn didn't fit the generality of "special" and she began to see herself above it – that's when Tony and Pepper started considering intercession.

Ragn's father never deemed much respect for personality profiling. He was, after all, Tony Stark – and whoever the hell tried to categorize him for his demerits, that was their problem. Raising a child under that notion, he didn't hold expectations for what came to be; he taught her etiquette, and right from wrong, and to open her eyes with empathy – as a parent should. But Tony had never given much thought to the development of a child's emotions. He was no stranger to scars, and if anything, prevented Ragn from ever enduring the pain of the childhood he once fervently drank away at night; but Ragn proved to be the product of her own ruling, something he'd never thought to teach nor prevent.

"I want to be put in a different class," she had said the day her parents finally registered her in private school; up until then, she had had home schooling and no exposure to other students.

"Why?" Pepper had asked.

And Ragn's answer seemed to bother Tony more than it should have: "Because the grade's incompetent. I don't want to be stuck with average-level kids."

_Incompetent_. Tony wasn't sure then if the word itself had disturbed him more, or the fact that she was only thirteen and somehow believed those in her grade level were_ crass_. He did know, however, that Ragn's attitude had been yet undeveloped, and he wondered then if he was thinking too hard or perhaps that small moment was a precursor to some part of her he would regret lecturing in the future.

Regardless, she grew: all blonde hair, green eyes, tall bones, and sass. Tony supposed that she acquired the sharp-witted tongue from himself, being that he was second-to-none master of wise-ass sarcasm. But Ragn was more clever than he had prepared for, because she divulged in intelligence; to be a smart-aleck took ego – but Ragn had an apparent and profound _talent_ that amplified itself as she learned.

And she was an impassioned learner, at that. Tony knew from the early years not to force the books on her unless she was willing – and unsurprisingly, she grabbed at knowledge the way children grabbed at candy. He didn't mind setting up a big library in the newly-finished Stark Tower for her; he did mind, however, finding her on the floor with a pile of textbooks beside her at 5 a.m., after specifically declaring anything past 12:00 as bedtime. She liked studying – and it wouldn't have bothered him if he knew she was innocently passionate about it. But what interested Ragn was challenging herself, and in turn, beating others to the game; Tony wasn't sure he liked the sound of that, particularly hearing the words come directly from her mouth. True, competition was healthy and encouraged by society; but Ragn took it to another level.

"Why can't I have night classes?" she would insist, and Tony would set the textbook down at the table and shake his head.

"You have credit courses going past five in the afternoon, and you just added three more between Saturday and Sunday," he would reply, irritation in his voice as he would never have thought to use on her. "You need a break, you're literally killing yourself. I understand that you like physics, and calculus, and all that – I get it. I was just as eager as you when I was a kid. But you're fifteen – you have a whole lifetime to challenge yourself, write novels, get a PhD. Right now, enjoy your childhood. And get sleep, you need it."

"I don't want sleep, I want an internship."

"Wait a few years and we'll consider it then."

She would pout, but her expressions always vaguely left him wondering. The persistence would stop for a while before something new came up – and when Ragn begged, she _didn't_, she bargained. Tony wasn't sure if "spoiled" quite defined her anymore.

What perhaps frightened Tony most was her overall aggression. Or, more than that, her control of it. Pepper didn't seem to agree with him when he began to limit her study hours; she didn't understand why he superimposed their child's impulses, and she questioned him often that he had been too harsh on a "kid that just happened to be interested in school rather than smoking and drinking and partying". As much as she condemned him, Stark had reasons – reasons he never thought he would have to consider, but they were there and he wasn't naïve to Ragn's behavior. He just wanted her to be a good kid. That control about her suggested something different, however; she was intelligent enough to be clever, even so clever that her aggression was tame and tucked away when it suited her, and Tony knew the feeling that came from such an advantage – he had seen it in her eyes.

So it hardly surprised him the first time he figured out she was a liar. That little girl with the super-strength wasn't a baby anymore, and with the wit of something beyond earth, she certainly prepared him for the probable best and worst. His pride in her became irresolute the day she came home with a bloodied lip and told him she'd bumped into the sink washing her face; he found out later that she'd beaten the hell out of two boys after school who had flung a spitball into her hair. He knew there was aggression in her veins; but additionally, he found out that day that she was not only physically violent, but a definite and convincing liar. She wore no sensitivity on her face when he reprimanded her afterward. The cold expression wasn't new to Tony, but perhaps what fazed him more was the distinct clinching of her thin lips that seemed too familiar. He was disappointed; inwardly, he was scared.

A string of violent teenage actions later, Tony cut her Tae Kwon Do courses, and any video games that involved blood. Ragn cried, but briefly so, and ceased to catch his attention for some time. A calm, incisive sixteen-year-old followed, and Tony's worrying halted when he found he could trust her again. He determined - alone at his desk and going over the years with Jarvis switching through files of their family photographs – that he had been using the word "aggressive" loosely and inadequately with Ragn. She was tenacious, she was ambitious, she liked testing herself and proving herself; but she was young, and unfulfilled, and maybe Tony had mistaken the danger in her eyes for a willingness to find purpose. He wanted her to be a good kid; but she was born with qualities he couldn't obstruct.

So he determined he didn't want to intervene. She was born strong; that strength was meant for something. He didn't believe in fate, but then again, he didn't have to – he'd _seen_ it the green of her eyes and gold of her hair. He'd only served as a fraction in the whole equation she would have to riddle as her life. So he said good-night to Jarvis that evening and closed up shop. Ragn was brought up with three affirmations, and all the rest was lying in wait.

The Avengers were spending the afternoon in Stark Tower; Ragn had made casual note of it this morning without dismay. Tony preferred her not to be present when they visited; not that it bothered her - she could use some time alone to think and study. Maybe she was over-thinking, though, as she found it strangely convenient that every time a mention of Thor coming to Earth came up, her father aptly convinced her to stay in school a little longer. Or maybe she just concerned herself with small impressions like this too often; she'd only met Thor once, and briefly (though that wasn't to say she didn't raise her suspicions when Tony interrupted their conversation in the manner of totally blocking the physical space between them). The other superheroes, she'd known for several years through childhood, though she found the company dull when they weren't out "avenging". Oh well. It might be better to stay out of their way regardless, seeing as how heroes tended to unintentionally attract villains.

She idly crossed one leg over the other. Sitting at the edge of a concrete step outside the doors of her school, Ragn pulled out a book of insipid interest and attempted to read. She would have liked to access better text in her library at home; but she really had no choice here, considering there were intrusive eyes peering at her from the corner of the building. Three boys – perhaps in their senior year – made it an obvious show to stare at her and gawk at each other. Conveniently alone, they had little idea what she could do to them – a thought that both irritated her for such a waste of time and excited her because she quite liked having the silent but deadly upper hand. Stroking fingers delicately between pages, she hid the smile that would have presumably encouraged them. But inwardly, oh yes, she was smiling – she found it a strange and sometimes frightening fact that malignance aroused her in a kind of way. Or, _malignance_ was a bad term – best to accept the word "challenge" for now. Yes, she liked a good challenge.

And one of the boys seemed to read her mind, as he promenaded his way over to her with a smirk that was definitely going to earn him a broken nose at the least. Ragn tensed her legs together, shifting in her seat while the boy nonchalantly made room for himself beside her. She didn't take a single moment to lift her gaze from her book, as she already knew there was a stupid grin wide across his face.

"Hi," he said between smiling teeth, and Ragn could hear his posse in the back snorting obnoxiously. When she regarded him no response, he leaned in closer – and the pen in her hand clicked with the twitch of unnerved fingers.

"I said hi," he tried again, and this time was rewarded with a glance of her attention. She looked up at him expectantly, lips curving in slight amusement. She studied him beneath the brainless expression, eyes piercing in a way that meant warning, but possibly just encouraged him all the more.

"Can I help you?" she finally acknowledged him. The giggling got louder behind them, and inwardly Ragn was rolling her eyes; such a waste of time.

Taking advantage, the boy went on to maintain a few good lines and throw in something she guessed was supposed to turn her on. He knew she was pretty, and she knew it too – and it excited her knowing how base and gullible teenage men were, as though she had no interest in boyfriends and physical contact of any sort, she could at least assure herself that there were people available for her to take her mischievous frustration out on. This kid was just another ant to her custom-cut slipper.

He took a pause to smile at her, face closer to hers than she would have preferred, and nodded "yeah" after mistakenly assuring himself that she found him cute.

"Yeah," Ragn egged him on, grin wide and eyes batting.

He nodded again and snorted stupidly, arrogantly. "I think you're cute too," he added as the two sniveling idiots behind them whistled.

"Oh yeah?" She laughed with him, teasing.

"Mhmm."

"Really?"

And the sound of a car attended Ragn's ears from the corner of the street; her ride home was here, how perfect. She scooped the underside of her book in one hand while the idiot next to her cracked up sickeningly and raised it to his face – he stared back with a slight smile, questioning. And with the cruelest of sneers between perfect teeth, she chuckled at him a last time before snapping the book shut between his nose. He cried out instantly and clenched his eyes; the book was conveniently heavy with thick pages, and the force of Ragn's hand was conveniently strong.

She stood as the book fell from his face and simpered a quiet "eheheh" as blood spurted through the ruptures where cartilage had cracked. She had hit him harder than expected – _good_. Bleeding and weeping, the kid motioned an attempt to hit back, but she swiftly kicked him back against the concrete and he whimpered into a daze. Dusting herself off, Ragn slung her tote over her shoulder and kept walking. She brushed off the memory of hearing his nose crack under her pages, though it gave her a twinge of pleasure she didn't like to admit existed.

Oh well. Challenge attained.


	2. Chapter 2: Sixteen Years

She came home to find a loft void of people save for her father's artificial intelligence. Her bag slumped to the floor, she scanned through the computer's panel and bit her lip restlessly.

"Jarvis?"

"Hello, Miss Ragn."

"Where is everyone?"

"A doombot breached the lobby approximately twenty minutes ago. Your father drew it upstate alongside Captain Rogers. The Team will take care of it shortly."

She groaned lightly. _Cue Victor Von Doom to spoil a family gathering_. His intrusions had become almost synonymous after so many years.

"Did Dad leave a note or anything?" she asked, prying the bar for a seltzer bottle.

"Not for the moment, but he left a call line open if you wish me to reach him."

"Thank you."

Some distance across the suburbs where woods engulfed the expanse of land, Captain America's shield swept athwart and with it, took a row of branches that descended into a ditch. When the superheroes had fled a distance away – catching their doombot in the last stages of its strength – one of the tallest and heaviest of trees plunged into the recession where they had passed; it caught with it one of their own – and the Thunder god groaned, feeling the weight of the oak press barely enough not to crush him. Thor let his head fall in the ache of recovering, before a wriggling stir beneath him startled his senses.

"You are so very heavy," Loki's voice cracked below him, and Thor's hands clutched at the dirt with unexpected immediacy. The Trickster coughed in desperate breaths, squirming. "Almost as heavy as your own damn hammer."

"Brother!" Thor heaved, a jumble of gravid emotions thrashing through his mind, nearly crushing Loki beneath him in the overwhelming process. His hands grappled everywhere and anywhere, reaching Loki's throat. "What are you doing here?"

"It is always reassuring to hear how sorely you've missed me," the Trickster chaffed with blatant venom in his tone.

Thor's brow furrowed, contorting the skin above his lids so heavily that his eyes could speak of nothing more but loss, grievance, _searching_. The message they sent was instantaneous; Loki didn't care.

"Ten years," the Thunderer muttered weakly. "Ten years I have not seen a _tress _of you in all the Nine Realms…" His muscles seized tensely, tightening his grip upon Loki. "Where did you go?"

"I was hiding," the god replied dimly. "The _advocate_ of my ventures on Earth wasn't particularly pleased to hear the results of, ah, our little sparring – between your Avengers and I. Though, he divested mourning the Chitauri when he learned what became of the Tesseract. I wasn't going to be there to hear what he wanted to do with my head, that I can assure you; so I kept to the shadows, as I tend to do best. Safe, hiding." A sardonic grin curled his lips, then. "Did Asgard miss me terribly?"

Thor's frown gnarled into a glare, and a grit of teeth declared the outright distress of feeling in his eyes. "Your name is like a curse upon anyone who speaks it. Any hope for your redemption has soiled."

"Mm," Loki thought over with a slight shrug. "I expected no less, I suppose."

And the weight atop him doubled in a sudden, angry press. He looked up at Thor whose eyes held no jest in their discontent. "How could you deny yourself that chance so…_selfishly_? I did not want this! I tried to change Father's mind – I would have done anything to undo your sentence. You take my efforts and you _spit_ at them so heartlessly, brother."

Thor was old; in technical years, he had seen millennia - but he was a boy for much longer, as Loki had determined for so many times his arrogance and ignorance brushed past the _maturity_ of compassion. A wise change later, paid with the price of an angry heart and the loss of a brother, Thor was no longer young. He did not grin boastfully at the thought of war, he did not carry himself in the proud step of a prince; his brow had wrinkled, his eyes had grown dark, and his thoughts comprised of the dull, weary unrest he felt toward reality – toward truth. Loki could pin-point the lines of sadness left permanent below his lids. The years had quite devoured this Golden Son more than he had believed possible.

Yet Loki sneered, wriggling beneath the pressure of Thor's hands and body. "Allfather would delight in my binding no doubt," he mused. "But I would not have his punishment. I ran then, and I will undoubtedly never stop running. What would _you_ have done, otherwise?"

"I would not have run."

"Of course. You are a fool." The Trickster shifted, causing their bodies to press in a manner that fueled Thor's long-stifled rage. Thor growled low.

"I searched for you across worlds," he lamented. "You had me wandering desperate. I could not rest with you gone."

"Mm, well clearly, you did," the Trickster's reply came mordantly, "'else, you would have found me in that time." He smiled, but there was no light in it – and Thor's fingers twitched upon his throat with a tension waiting to break him. He _wanted_ to break him for the years – for the pain, and the lies that were left to tyrannize his insecurities when the Lie-smith had cunningly vanished from all contact. But he could muster none of it save for the baring of teeth.

"Alas," Loki continued distractingly, "we are stuck in a very convenient situation, don't you think?"

And Thor noted - for the first time since Loki had seized his full attention - that the bulk of the tree above them made for an uncomfortably tight predicament. The god beneath him chuckled sneeringly and writhed against him once more. Thor made quick measure to raise his hand, but Loki nudged him pressingly before Mjolnir could heed the call.

"Ah, ah, ah, you mustn't," he warned. Thor faced him with befuddled restlessness, hand tensing into a fist. "Look to your left." Loki grinned, curving his neck in the direction of interest; Thor's gaze followed to a small mechanism beaming light into the distant forest, held just beneath the tree.

"There's a detonator in it," the Trickster apprised. "Another of Doom's ploys, no doubt. One blow to this tree, and this entire forest will be a crater."

Thor lowered his arm in understanding, a frustrated grunt escaping his lips. His much-amused brother did nothing to suppress the pleasure in his voice. "You'll just have to wait until your friends return."

And with a brush of Loki's jaw upon the other's face, a question arose in Thor's mind that was seemingly misplaced. A small implication - and soft caress of skin – caught him off guard: "Not that you should mind…I quite like this position we're in." And Loki's words in his ear were far too keen.

Thor stiffened. A nip of the Trickster god's teeth upon his Adam's apple alerted him to things he didn't want to recall at the moment; but Loki sighed a loose and pleasured sound as he sucked blithely at the flesh – and the Thunderer lost track of thought.

"Brother," he groaned unsurely, but was cut off by a swift pair of heels digging into his clothed thighs. Loki peered into his eyes with the unnatural green of something leering, serpentine – Thor wasn't sure what pooled beneath them. He peered back with hard, harrowed eyes.

"Do you remember the last time we were this close?" Loki whispered as blue met green. "Tell me you remember." His voice held slight rasp – a tone that Thor could hardly place for mischievous, despite his impish grin.

The Thunder god searched his face, too wordless and deviating from the question itself. He was sure the words held one and only one reference – the clinching of Loki's hands on his sides and their breaths uniting in familiar closeness told him enough. Yet there should have been – at this moment – a spring: a jump of interest in his veins, where the heat of their bodies pinned against each other would have been enough to arouse a baser part of him. The moment was here, right here, and Thor instead felt nothing – no heat, no lure. He looked into a face pale and cold; Loki was always milk-white, and always cool to the touch, but that was a younger brother with an exotic, strange guise. This Loki was grey beneath his skin, dark circles tracing under his lids and lines of age flush against his face like runes. This close, Thor's eyes followed the matrixes of dirt imbedded in his pores, and swallowed the contempt burning within. If he felt anything, it was not the thirst of arousal; rather, there was sadness – to see the might of a god crumble and dull where hardship had killed his glow – and to look back at his own hands, whose soiled, leathery wear showed no difference between Loki's skin and his own. No heat, none at all; just sadness, and the dark sensation of no longer being young.

Loki's gaze was full of apprehension. Whether Thor wanted to answer or not, the Trickster was going to drag out the subject. So he replied brokenly: "This is not the time, brother." And he expected no less but the wry chuckle from Loki's throat.

"I knew you didn't forget," the Lie-smith laughed, breath colliding with the flesh of Thor's neck. "How long ago – fifteen, sixteen years? Seems like days compared to the _millennia_ I spent waiting for you..."

"Sixteen years and that is all you can think about?" Thor finally spat, disgruntled. He grit his teeth in the austerity he held back in honor of being patient. "I understand you pity me none," he whispered low, "but spare us both the ail of such talk. Whatever we did in the past belongs to the past, and I do not wish to remember it despite what you believe about me-"

"You enjoyed it," Loki impeded, discretion the only thing seemingly "belonging to the past". Thor felt a pair of grinning lips press at the center of his throat, teasing in their nips. "You know you did. You are a base and impudent man, Thor, just as I. You enjoyed it."

The humming sensation on his neck suddenly became overwhelming. "I thought you sincere," he replied strenuously. "You do not know the pain your lies transpose on me."

"Yet you keep believing them."

A growl resonated above Thor's intention. There was so much more to it than Loki bothered to acknowledge; so much more that the Thunderer wished he could relay through glares alone. They were not hateful glares – his eyes spoke of pain. He looked upon his brother with broken warning – because that was all he had left, his pride disintegrate in the scars from their skirmish. Yet Loki looked back, just as broken, and disregarded everything. He toyed with whatever sentiment he had left as if picking at the stitches of a pustule wound. And it burned Thor – more than anything – because above all else, he spoke the _truth_ when Thor most conveniently did not want to face it. And Loki did it with the pure intention of driving his heart into the ground – because Thor would never stop trusting him.

For that, he supposed he _was_ a fool.

Loki keened. "You give in to my tricks to a point where you know no difference," he said. "Perhaps I was being sincere, but that, you will never discern so long as you keep falling prey to me."

"Is it too much to bear, that I do it simply because I love you?" Thor trembled slightly, though he could not distinguish whether it was from the weight pinning him down or from the weight of something heavier – and disheartening - in his breast. "I would not surrender to your darkness, no matter how you wish my undoing," he said.

And Loki mewled something of a laugh. "You weren't thinking that the night you buried your _cock_ in me."

If there was a nerve determining the wind capacity to the_ storm_ within Thor, his brother had undoubtedly breached it. And the Trickster god smiled as Thor's hand rediscovered its place around his neck. "Do not speak this filth," the elder god warned, and Loki could see an unsteady vein rear its limits above Thor's brow.

"Filth?" Loki sneered. "What filth – we_ fucked_. You beckoned it, I did nothing but trust your hand to take care of me. You _vowed_ to take care of me, did you not?"

"You_ tricked_ me into believing I could save you!" The thunder in his brother's voice cracked desperate and sobbed like the tremors of a riled storm. Then, and only then, Thor finally broke for the first time. "I wanted to save you! I thought you valued more than this – more than callous _sex_ to amend the time I mourned your death. I didn't believe what they told me – about how black your heart despoiled. I don't believe it now; yet you come here after ten years of leaving me to mourn – _again_ – and all you chaff is the few hours I spent between your legs!"

There was a pause, before the darkness in Loki's eyes recoiled in light of a thought. "Did it burn," he whispered slowly, "to find my clone in your arms the morning after?"

And Thor buried a twitching finger just beneath his brother's jugular, expression broken before the hardness returned to his gaze. "Like the burden of watching you fall all over again," he gnarred. "Only that time, I mourned your _life_."

The smirk upon his brother's lips fell to a small curve, almost fading into a mouth familiarly uncertain. The arching hips into his own drew back slight and slow, and pinned into the rubble and earth of the forest floor, their clad bodies connected tiredly and sweaty. Their suggestive position was reminiscent – painful and messy and Thor groaned in the discomfort of having Loki's legs around him when there was nothing but ice between them.

He huffed arduously, "You will run forever and you will continue to hurt me, but I suppose I care not. I will catch you – and eventually, you will remain. It is nature, and you cannot coil in darkness forever. Even now, I have stopped you…" He pressed his breast to Loki's, and their armor rattled in the grating of their forms. "…and you will have to bear this weight – we _both_ will – until my friends return."

And Loki scoffed then, the humming of his breath and writhing of his hips beneath the Thunder god suggesting no displeasure. He simply reclined his head to settle in the rubble, and looked up. "No, Thor," he then spoke softly, idly. "Just you."

And with a glow emanating at the surface of his skin, the God of Lies left a trailing luster of magic as he was nothing more but a fading impression beneath his brother.


	3. UPDATE: things have changed!

Hello, everyone.

I understand that I've left this story for too long of a time, and I sincerely apologize.

I came back to tell you that I'm starting to rewrite this fic with a new storyline. The updated version can be found entitled "The Sun Grew Dark" under my works list.

Again, my sincerest apologies. The plot points I had weren't working, and so Tony Stark/Pepper Potts will no longer make the same appearances here. Please accept the change if you wish to read it. I personally like the new idea much better; it's much more workable for my theme.

Thank you very much!

-Superficialskull


End file.
